


Do Not Go Gently

by rosymamacita



Series: Arcadia [12]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: A Little Fun, Angst, Canon Compliant, F/M, First Kiss, Jealous Clarke, Love Confessions, Post Season 3, kiss kiss, the end of the world is nigh, trysts in the woods
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-13
Updated: 2016-08-13
Packaged: 2018-08-08 12:45:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,767
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7758394
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosymamacita/pseuds/rosymamacita
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On their mission to shut down the reactors, they camp in the woods. Clarke watches as people pair up, knowing that they want to really live in their last weeks of life, and understanding-- until she sees Echo lead Bellamy off into the woods.</p><p>Clarke suddenly can't allow it, and follows them into the trees.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Do Not Go Gently

**Author's Note:**

> this was based off of an ask about how Bellamy might respond to Echo if she were romantically interested. I kind of thought Clarke's reaction might be more interesting.

The planning meeting ended and the team broke up into pairs. It seemed that most everyone had decided there was no reason not to. Sky people, grounders, it didn’t matter. They knew the world was probably going to end, even if they were trying to stop it, and they were taking every opportunity they could to fuck, as if it were their last night on Earth. Which yeah, it was probably close to that. 

Clarke just squeezed her heart shut and focused on her meal, and the beautiful woods they walked through. These were different woods than around Arkadia or Polis. The trees were tall and straight and there was very little brush to struggle through. The ground was covered with a soft bed of pine needles and it made no noise as they walked. There were other things to enjoy in life besides fucking, right? The flight of a red bird caught her eye and she watched it soar between the trees and off into the distance. There was someone out there. Two someones.

Maybe they thought no one would notice. Maybe they thought no one would care, given the state of hooking up among the group. But Clarke saw them as they slipped farther away behind the screen of trees. Echo and Bellamy. Her whole body went cold. 

She sat there blinking for a while, her stew going cold in her travel tin as her mind replayed how they slipped off between the gray trunks of the trees. Her hand in his. Off, away, alone.

Fear.

She’d betrayed him once, and it had torn him apart.

It was fear.

She put her tin down and went off after them. The thought that Echo could do something to him terrified her and she couldn’t think beyond anything but stopping them. Nothing could happen to Bellamy.

She heard a rustle a little farther on, and her heart sped up. Echo was an ally now, she’d made her excuses, and they had accepted her, not that Clarke believed her. She’d always kept an eye on her, even when Roan sent her with them as a guide through the northern lands. He said that Echo felt she owed Bellamy something and she was the best person for the job. But what did owing someone mean, when you’d already proved you were dishonorable?

She thought about the gun at her hip, but she couldn’t. That would be the wrong thing to do. And she had made a decision about doing right, no matter how she wanted to shoot the woman who was responsible for leading Bellamy down such a dark path.

“Bellamy!” she called, her voice carefully innocent of her vindictive thoughts. She was just looking for him because of planning stuff. She needed to consult with him. That was all. “Bellamy! Are you over there?”

Bellamy stepped out from behind a tree, his eyebrow cocked. “I’m here, Clarke,” he said, his voice lower than usual. Clarke stopped suddenly. Her heart started beating hard inside her chest, like it wanted to get out. 

She pushed on. It was planning stuff. Business.

“Oh good, I was just looking for you,” Clarke said. “I needed to ask you about what we should do about that secondary plant.” Clarke could have said more. She was about to say more, but Echo stepped out from behind the tree and her expression was not nearly so pleasant as Bellamy’s was.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Clarke said. “Was I interrupting something?” Clarke smiled at Echo. Innocent. She blinked up at the taller woman.

Echo shot her eyes over to Bellamy, who looked back at her, as if he was about to say something. But he didn’t. Clarke breathed a silent sigh of relief and pasted a pleasant smile on her face. 

“I guess not,” Echo said, and Clarke knew she was pissed. Clarke didn’t care. She just wanted her away from Bellamy. She didn’t trust her with him, and she didn’t want him near her. Not one little bit. Clarke broadened her smile.

“See you later,” Echo said, looking at Bellamy, “I guess,” she said and then brushed past Clarke.

“Bye Echo,” Clarke said. Echo rolled her eyes and stormed off into the woods.

Clarke watched her go, happily, before turning back to Bellamy. “That would have been more effective if she’d had a really good hard ground to stomp on and make lots of noise, don’t you think?” She could not help the grin.

Bellamy scoffed and shook his head. “What are you doing, Clarke?”

Clarke blinked at him. “What?”

“Why did you follow us out here, Clarke.” His face was dark and he scowled.

Clarke swallowed hard and shook her head. She felt the heat rise to her face. “I wanted to talk to you about how we’re going handle that other plant. I mean, I know we’ve got it all settled to tackle the reactor, but I don’t feel comfortable just assuming the secondary plant is not going to—“

“Knock it off, Clarke.”

Clarke went quiet. She liked the woods here. They smelled fresh and earthy. Everything was cool under the pine boughs. Bellamy glared at her with that look on his face that said he wasn’t going to put up with her shit. Fine.

“I don’t trust her. She betrayed you once, and I don’t like her being alone with you.”

Bellamy snorted, and smirked at her, his arms crossed over his chest, and waited. 

Clarke pressed her lips together and took a step towards him. “I care about you, Bellamy. I would never let her hurt you.”

Bellamy took a step towards her, too, his lashes lowering to half shutter his eyes. “She wasn’t going to hurt me, she was going to fuck me. I think I deserve a little fun, don’t you? I mean, it’s not as if we’re going to get a lot of time to live, if this doesn’t work out.“

Clarke looked away, swallowing heavily. She should apologize for interrupting. That’s what she’d do if she got in the way of any other of her friends’ encounters. She would beg forgiveness and go off after the offended party and bring them back. Probably give them her stash of moonshine to make up for it. But not him.

“How could you trust her after she betrayed you, Bellamy?” She couldn’t look at him. She thought it interesting how the pine needles on the ground were an orange brown, not the dark green that they were above their heads.

“Are you honestly lecturing me about this?”

Clarke blinked. Her eyelids fluttered and her breath caught in her throat. “About—about what?”

His jaw tensed and he took another step towards her until he was standing close, looking down at her. She couldn’t stop the fluttering of her eyelids, so she stared at the fallen pine needles instead.

“About fucking someone who betrayed you?”

Lexa. Her heart started racing. They had been so careful not to talk about her. All this time. He knew how much she’d meant. And she knew how much it had hurt him that she’d chosen Lexa over him. So they just avoided the topic.

The toes of her boots had scuffed a break in the carpet of orange pine needles and scarred the gentle ground with the dark, almost black of the earth below it. “I didn’t— I didn’t just fuck her.” Clarke felt like she was swallowing her words. “I loved her.”

He took another step towards Clarke and she couldn’t move back. His presence was magnetic and she needed it. She had the sudden desire for his arms around her. Talking about Lexa made her feel vulnerable and weak and she wanted him to hold her, but she could feel his anger radiating off of him. Tears rose up in her throat. She choked them back. She didn’t want this.

“That’s worse, Clarke,” he said, and his words were almost a whisper in this quiet, softly blanketed woods. “You gave her your self. You gave her your heart. How could you do that? Didn’t you know she would have betrayed you again? She did. She doomed us all to die in Arkadia.”

She felt herself yearn towards him and instead wrapped her arms around herself. 

He sighed heavily. “Why didn’t you just fuck her and get her out of your system? Why did you have to stay there and fall in love with her? Why did you trust her?”

“I didn’t…I didn’t trust her, but she was our best shot, Bellamy. She could see the value of being our allies. I thought I could protect us, I thought I could change her.”

“But she changed you, instead.”

The tears splashed on her folded arms, darkening the fabric of her jacket. She turned away from Bellamy. “How do you keep from falling in love with someone, Bellamy? How do you keep them from changing you?” she could hear the tears in her voice and she knew he could, too. “I don’t know how. It never works.” 

She felt him behind her, closer than before, like he wanted to hold her the same way she wanted him to, but something kept holding him back.

“Do you think if I had just fucked her, I wouldn’t have felt the way I did? I could have ‘gotten her out of my system?’ Could I have left then and come home to you and everything would have been fine? Would that have worked? Would we have been safe?”

“Did it matter? We weren’t safe anyway.”

She laughed then. It was bitter. She knew that if she leaned back, she would be pressing up against his chest. Suddenly she wanted that. She brushed her eyes dry. 

“Do you think that fucking is the cure to love, Bellamy?” She didn’t know when the tears had stopped, she had thought that once she started crying the tears would continue on forever, but they hadn’t. Instead, all she could feel was his nearness, and the burning in her belly. His breath that stirred in her hair and the electricity between their bodies that weren’t touching. 

“I—“ he started. The silence stretched out. Tension pulsed around them.

“They all die, Bell. Everyone I love. I love them and then they die.”

“No,” he said, and just leaned forward until his front was pressed up against her back. He bent his head down, over her shoulder, and pressed his cheek against hers, softly, his arms still at his sides.

“No,” she whispered and turned just a bit, brushing her lips against his cheekbone.

He sucked in a breath and she felt his chest swell against her.

Clarke swallowed heavily. “We’re all probably going to die anyway, and— and I think you deserve to have a little fun.”

He was so still behind her, against her. He wasn’t even breathing. Waiting. For her. 

She lifted her hand to his hair, feeling the curly strands, surprisingly soft. She tangled her fingers in them, tugging just slightly. “But not with her.”

“Who then?” he asked breathlessly, his words warm against her cheek. 

The bastard was going to make her say it. But she couldn’t. She choked on everything she really wanted to say, about forgiveness and need and desire and instead she turned around to face him, shaking her head in frustration. His eyes were warm and dark and his lips were parted. “We’re gonna die anyway,” she said brokenly. “Can I…“ not knowing the right words, she faltered.

“Have a little fun?” he asked quietly, letting her off the hook. His eyes dropped to her lips.

She laughed. “Sure,” she said because it was easier, and leaned up into him, pressing her lips into his, soft. Warm. The light filtering through the trees filled her head. He tasted like salt and pine. He breathed her in and she caressed his jaw with delicate fingers, his stubble rough and real.

He finally pulled her into him, his large hand a solid presence on her back, under her jacket, his other hand cradling her neck, tangling in her hair. The kiss was quiet and profound, just like this forest. How could she feel like she was floating at the same time she felt she was planted, rooted into the earth? Connected. Living.

He pulled away and she chased his lips, delirious. “Wait,” he panted. “Wait, Clarke. It’s not going to work.”

She stared up at him, unfocused, confused. Feeling bruised by his kiss and the way he was holding her off. “What?”

“I was wrong,” he said. 

She tried to take a step back, afraid, as his words started to make sense, but he hung onto her arms, gripping her tightly.

“No,” he said, his voice low and broken. “I was wrong, this won’t ever get you out of my system. It will only make it worse, Clarke. Nothing can make me stop loving you.”

Clarke drew in a shaky breath, her eyes fluttering closed. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to laugh or cry. She swallowed. “So there’s no cure for love?” His fingers flexed on her arms, a question. She opened her eyes and smiled at him. A tear fell down her cheek anyway. “We’re doomed then?” He stared at her with his brows drawn over his concerned eyes. She shrugged. “I guess if the world is going to end, we might as well…” she slid her hand up Bellamy’s shirt, skating her fingers up his spine. He shivered and his breath sped up. “Enjoy being doomed.”

“I’m willing to risk death if it means I get to love you.” He kissed away the tear, and she turned into his kiss. “I love you,” he said.

“We’re going to die,” Clarke said against his lips, like mantra, trying to lessen the risk. The fear. “We’re going to die, anyway.” 

“It’s worth the risk,” he said and kissed her deeply, pressing her back against the trunk of a tall tree. His words reminded her of that day that seemed like a life time ago, when she sent him into the mountain because she was trying not to love. It didn’t work. It never worked. She continued loving and it was good, even when it hurt. 

She swallowed as he kissed his way down her neck, opening the collar of her shirt to nip at the swell of her breast.

“I’m going to tell you now, Bellamy,” she said, fighting to get the words out, through the fear and the heat that his tongue left on her skin. “I don’t want to wait until you’re dying. Or I’m dying. I don’t want to wait anymore until I’m about to lose you.” He stopped nibbling on her skin, glanced up at her, but she couldn’t continue. Did he know? Could he see it in her face? Was that why he stopped, took her hand and eased her down to sit on the spongy pine needles. 

He took off his jacket and laid it on the ground, then stretched out and pulled her into his side, so he could hold her. So they could lay there, looking up at the mysteries of the shifting pine boughs. “Whatever you want to say or not say, it’s okay,” he whispered into her ear. “We don’t have to talk if you don’t want to. We don’t have to do anything. I just…being with you, kissing you, touching you?” He rolled to support himself on his elbow, looking down on her, running his free hand up and down her side, just barely touching. “This is better than just having a little fun.”

Clarke nodded as she looked at him. He was so… kind. How could he still be so kind when she knew what he had done? What she had done? What they both had done? She put her palm to his face. “I used to talk to you all the time when I was alone, in the caves and the bunkers, after I left you. All the time. I said ‘I’m sorry’ a million times.”

He shook his head. “No more apologies,” he said, and tucked his face into the crook of her neck, nuzzling her, going back to the trail of kisses down her mostly open shirt. He rucked it up and caressed the skin of her stomach while he kissed her. His touch lit her up, and watching the trees above her head, the words felt easier.

“I said, ‘I miss you,’ even more. All the time. Because I was so alone and it was almost as bad as being in solitary on the Ark. Because I knew what it was like to have you. And then not have you.”

He grumbled into the skin over her ribs. The sensation made her roll her head back, but she had to get this out. 

“But then, the most important thing, when I knew it, and I felt it without a shadow of a doubt, and I hated myself for how things turned out—“ Bellamy nipped at the skin of her hip, just below the waistband that he had unbuttoned. Clarke took both of her hands and lifted Bellamy’s head so that he would look at her for this. “I told you how much I loved you. And I cried because you weren’t there, and I knew I had probably lost you. And I wished I could tell you, but I couldn’t.”

Bellamy loomed above her, suddenly, his body, hard and strong, pressing her into the soft forest floor. “What?” he said.

“I couldn’t let you come out here with Echo. I couldn’t. You deserved to be happy and I was so… but then you came out here with her and I— god. It didn’t matter anymore. I didn’t care. Not you. Not her. Not anyone else but me.”

“I never cared about her, you have to know that. I cared about you. Say it again.” 

She closed her eyes, feeling so much lighter. Telling him, finally felt right. Having him hear it. 

“No, I’m sorry. Don’t say anything if you don’t want to. This is perfect, okay? Just like this?”

She looked at him as he descended for another kiss. His weight on top of her made it needier. She could feel him pressed up against her thigh and she ground into him. He groaned into her mouth, and she went for his buckle.

“You sure you don’t want to go find a tent somewhere?” He asked, brushing her hair back so tenderly, even as she felt him hard and heavy against her.

“No, you’re right. This is perfect. You. The earth. The sky. The trees. If we’re going to die, I want to appreciate it while we still can. All those years up in space, missing this.”

“Hmmm,” he hummed, sliding down her body, unzipping her pants. “Let me make it better.” And he did. When she came, the wind blew and the trees danced and Clarke laughed, full of joy. She pulled him up to her and kissed him with her taste still on his lips. She raked her nails down his back and wrapped her heels around his waist. “Fuck me,” she growled into his ear, and he obliged. As he drove her higher, her inarticulate moans coalesced into one word. “Bellamy.” “Bellamy.” “Bellamy.” 

Afterwards, he lay limp and panting in her arms. She tried to wrap him up, to keep him safe, to keep him close. To hold him against all the dangers of the world, the heart break and the violence, the pain and guilt. Even the radiation. And she knew she couldn’t protect him against any of that. All she could offer him was her love.

“I love you, Bellamy. I do. I’m in love with you.”

He kissed her collar bone and raised his head with a smile. “I guess that means I’m gonna die.”

Clarke gasped and smacked his shoulder. But before she could workup any anger, he kissed her again. A kiss that said there was time. A kiss of hope. A kiss of what it meant to be together.

“We could live, you know,” she said, later, when they were mostly dressed again. 

“Excuse me?” he grinned. He couldn’t stop grinning. She loved it.

“I said we could live. We could beat this disaster and live. We’ve beaten all the others.”

He looked at her like she was crazy. “You think we can win when the whole Earth is about to try and poison us. You can’t flirt your way into a peace treaty with The Earth, Clarke.”

She growled and pushed him over until he was back on the ground and covered in pine needles, and she sat on him with her thighs on either side of his hips. “We’re going to live you jackass.”

He clasped the back of her neck and pulled her in for another kiss. This one was different still. Fierce and joyous. She was looking forward to learning all of his kisses. “We’re going to live,” he whispered roughly against her lips. “Because we have something worthwhile to fight for.”

Chills ran up and down her spine. It had been a joke, almost. A tempting of the fates, of her fear. She loved him, and everyone she loved died, but they could beat the apocalypse, they’d done it before. They could live.

“We could have this,” she breathed. “We can fight it.”

He ran his thumb over her lower lip, and smiled. “‘Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.’”

She stared at him blinking.

He grinned. “Dylan Thomas. 20th century poet—“

Clarke shot him a dirty look.“‘Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,’” she quoted. “‘And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,/ Do not go gentle into that good night.’ I know who Dylan Thomas is.”

Bellamy laughed, full throated. A bird took off at the noise, startled. He grabbed her down and hugged her, rolling around until they were both full covered in pine needles. He kissed her and when he let her go, he said, “We could have this. This love. We could have it. We could win.”

They stood up and dusted the pine needles off of them the best they could, although Clarke might be picking them out of her hair for weeks. They walked back to the camp, together, his arm draped over her shoulders and hers wrapped around his waist. This was good. This was worth fighting for.

They were going to win.


End file.
